Author and Ghostwriter
I went to Boulder, Colorado for a friend’s wedding, which I was afraid was going to make me depressed–not because she’s all happily married and I’m not. (No thanks! Blech!) but because I’d be forced to make small talk with people I don’t know, which typically makes me feel like a badly programmed robot destined … Read moreChautauqua Park: Boulder’s Little Scandal
Three cheers for Caitlin Moran’s memoir, How to Be a Woman, which had me laughing all the way through and on into the night! Meet Writer Caitlin Moran With a precocious start as a teen music writer, she went on to write a column for The Times for nearly two decades. You can study lots of … Read moreCaitlin Moran’s Memoir a Triumph
Spent way too much time today debating whether or not to make a last-minute trip to the National Speaker Association conference called Influence 2018, in Dallas. In the end, I couldn’t make it, but if you’re a ghostwriting client who wants a book written in order to promote a career as a speaker, you really … Read moreCheck out the National Speaker Association
This blog is a follow-up to yesterday’s post about how important it is to build your author platform. Would-be authors, in order to build your author platform, you probably already know that you need to blog. A blog is just a magazine about yourself that you publish online to let people in on the fact … Read moreBuild Your Author Platform with Deep Blogging
We wrote a book together and now you want to publish it, right? Dear client, since I ghostwrote your book, I can assure you the memoir is of top, publishable quality and readers are laughing and crying in all the right places, so why aren’t publishers beating down your door? Because … you’re not a … Read moreBecome a Sure Thing, or “Tap Dance Backward in Heels”
Let me answer this question for once and for all: will writing a book make you rich? It’s pretty unlikely. Have books made people rich before? Yes, they have, but there’s a lot that goes into making money from a book. It’s complicated. I say this because sometimes ghostwriters get a bad rap as “that … Read moreWill Writing a Book Make You Rich?
I want to talk about Abby Wambach’s memoir and why I didn’t really like it, but I’m quite sure what’s wrong with Wambach’s memoir isn’t her fault. It’s probably her agent’s, publisher’s, and editor’s faults. It all has to do with the fact that America has an obsession with trauma in memoir. In fact, I’m … Read moreDon’t Manufacture Trauma in Memoir
Anyone who has ever tried to write her own memoir without any writing experience quickly discovers that it’s not easy. In fact, for most people, it’s impossible. Not everyone is a writer. In fact, most people have trouble stringing a few sentences together in a compelling way, and that is as it should be. Becoming … Read moreWriting: The Sane Insanity
If I were a stranger to you–an interesting stranger, but a stranger nonetheless–and I tried to sell you a ghostwritten book about me for twenty dollars, I might meet with limited enthusiasm. Now, imagine I could also offer you a subscription to a magazine about me for free. You’d sign up for the magazine, no … Read moreBlogging: A Ghostwritten Mag about YOU
Today, I’d like to talk to memoir ghostwriting clients about something I use in the process of writing your memoir: a timeline. The timeline is a research document, and in it, I simply catalogue all the life events you’ve told me about. I put these events into a grid, in order, listed by year. Timelines … Read moreWhat a Timeline Means to your Memoir